Central Perk

vineri, 2 decembrie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

AT-ST Treehouse
Happy 19th Birthday Text Messaging! [infographic]
People and Their Fish Twins
Melanie Amaro Sings Earth Song by Michael Jackson On X Factor
55 Vintage Video Game Print Ads From 80s and 90s
Happens Only in Africa - Part 2
Achievement Unlocked U.S. Army [Infographic]

Posted: 02 Dec 2011 12:36 PM PST

Ever wonder what it would be like to pilot a AT-ST Walker in the Battle for Endor from 'Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi'? Well, the intrepid 'Star Wars' fans who built this treehouse replica of a AT-ST get to pretend to blast pesky Ewoks in their own backyard. While it could use a grey paint job, this is still one of the coolest treehouses we've ever seen.

Source: reddit

Happy 19th Birthday Text Messaging! [infographic]

Posted: 02 Dec 2011 12:19 PM PST

Did you know its been 19 years since the very first text message was sent? It's true, the first text message was sent on December 03, 1992 to Richard Jarvis from Neil Papworth, who sent the message using his personal computer. The text message read "Merry Christmas".

Sending a text message is now as popular as making calls for those with a SMS-capable phone. The graphic below from Tatango highlights some of the important statistics and milestones in the history of text messaging including:

* 35 – The average number of text messages sent per month by Americans in 2000.

* 357 - The average number of text messages sent per month by Americans in 2011.

* 200,052 – The record for most text messages sent and received in a single month.

* $585 billion – Revenue generated from text messages by wireless carriers.

Source: tatango

People and Their Fish Twins

Posted: 02 Dec 2011 12:24 AM PST

Artist Ted Sabarese had a fabulous idea for the following photoshoot, people paired with fish that look like them. Now when you tell someone that he has a face like a fish, you'll have to be more specific. For more pics.

Melanie Amaro Sings Earth Song by Michael Jackson On X Factor

Posted: 01 Dec 2011 10:44 PM PST

With only seven more contestants left in the X Factor, Melanie Amaro made sure she would continue in the competition with an explosive rendition of Michael Jackson's not so famous Earth Song. After, the audience rose to their feet in applause and the judges only had positive things to say.

55 Vintage Video Game Print Ads From 80s and 90s

Posted: 01 Dec 2011 09:28 PM PST

So I stumbled upon some awesome vintage video game ads recently and I wanted to share them with you guys! Sadly, I remember almost ALL of these ads from when I used to obsessively collect and read every issue of EGM (electronic gaming monthly), gamefan, gamepro, nintendo power and all the other video game magazines from that time period. So when I saw these I was overcome with Nostalgia and great memories of childhood. Those were the days! I hope to take you down memory lane for a while and get all warm and fuzzy.

Source: andysowards

Happens Only in Africa - Part 2

Posted: 01 Dec 2011 09:03 PM PST

I just love Africa , simple and not complicated. They are just who they are. No stress. It is not like anything else, it's unusual. Life, routine, relationships everything is very different from things what we are accustomed to.

Happens Only in Africa - Part 1

Achievement Unlocked U.S. Army [Infographic]

Posted: 01 Dec 2011 08:46 PM PST

At first glance, it might not seem as though gamers and members of the military have much in common. Probably not on second glance either. But they do have one thing in common – a hunger for challenge and achievements. In gamers this manifests as a compulsion to complete 100% of a game's content (even beyond just beating the game), but in the military it means gaining as many medals, qualifications, and ribbons as possible, along with increasing one's rank.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: militaryeducation

Using CRO to Make Great Content - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 01 Dec 2011 01:07 PM PST

Posted by caseyhen

This week we are joined by Carlos del Rio from Agillian, who is based here in Seattle, WA. Carlos will discusses a method that will help you make great content by following 3 easy steps. After watching the video dive into the comments and discuss what your thoughts are on using CRO to make great content.

P.S. It looks like we might have also been joined by a fly, so please excuse him when he flies across the screen a few times....

Video Transcription

Hey Mozzers. I'm Carlos del Rio. I own a consultancy called Agillian, and I am the author of "User Driven Change: Give Them What They Want" and a "Strategic Framework for Emerging Media," which is kind of a mouthful. Even I have trouble saying it.

I am here today to tell you how to use CRO to make great content, and when I say to make great content, I mean for any portion of your marketing campaign. So, you need to make sure that you meet the most basic portion of conversion optimization. I mean the three things that are the most important for all conversion rates are a clear action, a clear purpose, and a clear value. That's what every landing page is trying to do. That's what every pay-per-click ad is trying to do. Tell a person what you want them to do, tell them what it is about, and communicate what the value they're going to get out of the interaction. So, "Buy tires cheap," or "Buy tires, free delivery." Something where they know what it is that they are coming for and that they get something at the other end. For example, if you are writing a piece of content for your blog, you want to be able to answer, "Is it clear what the purpose of this blog is? Is it clear what the topic is? Is it clear that there is a value for this person to share it with their friends?" Essentially if you are doing blog and content marketing, it is really for the links. We know that's what it's about. Same thing with if you're making LOLcats. Same thing if you're sending out an email to solicit a link buy.

So, in all of your strategies you want to know what is this particular campaign doing. Is it helping our users understand what they can do with us? Is it helping them understand who we are, or is it helping them understand what the value is? Each one of the individual pieces, like each piece of link bait or each email or each tool that you build is supposed to answer all three of these very clearly. You want to know exactly how to interact with it. You want to know what it is going to do. You want to know why is it of value to you.

So, if you take the example of, like, LOLcats, we've all seen these. The difference between the millions of LOLcats that nobody cares about and the LOLcats that end up being in your Facebook stream every 15 minutes are that the ones that get shared answer the clear action, which is share me; what is the purpose, this is a LOLcat; and what is the value, this is the funniest LOLcat that I've seen all day. This is the LOLcat that crosses over with my community. If I was to make a cat playing on a computer that said, "I'm up in your Internet messing with your title tags," you're going to find that funny because you are in SEO, but almost everybody else is going to be like, uh, lame.

If you were, say, This or That, Rebecca Kelley did a thing recently that was, "Does Justin Beiber look like Velma from Scooby Doo?" This enrages both people who like Justin Beiber and people who like Velma. So, what she is doing is creating a place where you interact with this piece of content, and she has two groups of people that want to interact with this type of content. They get to show what they think, and they get a value out of having you know what they think. When they pass this on to their friends who come in and do those three things to derive value for themselves, you get traffic, which you are monetizing.

It is the same thing with the LOLcats. Cheezburger makes money off of people coming to visit. They get people coming to visit by thinking about a clear action, a clear purpose, and a clear value from the perspective of their users.

In the same way, you are here in the Moz community, and they have two kinds of users. They have basic users and they have premium users. Well, they keep building new tools, and they have to think about: What is the action of this tool, what is the purpose of this tool, and is it going to be valuable to the community? When they write out to every one of the basic members and say, "We have this great new tool," they have to really go through this process twice. They have the process of does the tool meet these standards? Is it clear what I can do with the tool? Is it clear what the tool is going to deal with? Is it clear that I can get some value out of it? They also have to write an email that it's very clear what they want you to do, which is switch from being a basic to being a premium user. It has to be very clear what this tool is going to do for you, and it has to be very clear that you're going to derive value out of it. Otherwise, they aren't going to get a good conversion rate.

So, hopefully, these examples will give you something that's actionable for your business and let you take conversion rate optimization into all of the things that you're doing for your marketing.

I'm Carlos del Rio. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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A Letter to Google from Inbound Marketers

Posted: 01 Dec 2011 02:48 AM PST

Posted by Jlbraaten

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Hi Google. It’s been great between us, hasn’t it? You’ve always provided great research and measurement tools to support a great search engine, and in return, I’ve done my best to create quality material on the web. Inbound marketers and Google working together, we’ve been improving the Internet one quality web page after another for a while now.

But lately you’ve been doing a few things that make me think you don’t want inbound marketers to create excellent website content anymore. Perhaps you’re just in it to maintain your high prestige now and don’t care about us like you once did. I wanted to drop you a note about few thoughts on inbound marketers’ minds.

SSL Search Sleight of Hand

When you made SSL search the default, we all cringed as you justified hiding organic keyword traffic data in web analytics tools in the name of user privacy. While I also value user privacy, a few things about what you said didn’t add up.

For example, in a recent SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday (about six minutes in), Rand noted to Microsoft’s Duane Forrester that Bing does a good job handling user privacy for keyword traffic in web analytics tools where Google will now be sending (not provided) instead. They’re not considering any changes as drastic as you are. Why did it have to be that way, Google?

You announced that 10 percent would be the norm, and cushioned the announcement by rolling the change out slowly. Now, some sites are reporting between 20 to 50 percent of their organic search traffic as (not provided) instead of the actual keywords since you flipped the switch in early November. Personally, I'm up to about 15%.

Google Analytics Not Provided Segment

Meanwhile, AdWords customers get every bit of keyword data, personalized URLs, and all. What’s up with that? Does that mean that privacy matters unless someone is willing to pay to remove it? Are you aware of how obvious this is to people? It just seems a little evil, and I thought you were against that sort of thing. Just sayin’.

Multi-Channel Second Fiddle

When you announced Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF) in Google Analytics, I was thrilled to get a level of attribution reporting on the channels that are sending traffic to my site. It was neat to see how social media and organic search supported and assisted the goals of my websites.

But then I found that while we can segment and group traffic by channel (e.g., search, social, etc.), Google Analytics users can’t organize MCFs by organic landing page or sections of a website. How am I supposed to see how people interact with the sections of my website as they make their way through their buying process over multiple visits?

Google Analytics MCF Custom Channel Groupings

Again, you allowed us to group segments and channel groupings by AdWords landing page, but not by organic landing page, according to Nick and Avinash of Web Analytics TV (about 5:15 minutes in). Apparently, Google, you only pull in AdWords data for that feature. Of course. Inbound marketers are second fiddle again.

What Gives, Google?

I’ve heard a lot of rumblings lately that perhaps all of these recent indiscretions on inbound marketers are leading up to a suite of offerings for us in the new Google Analytics Premium. For a tiny investment of only six figures a year, I too can have my data back in addition to a person to call and talk to? It doesn’t seem like it’s a fair exchange, especially given how much we’ve given you while you were still up-and-coming.

Before Google Analytics, you knew what happened within Google search, and you saw how sites linked to each other, but you didn’t yet know how people behaved when they were on websites. You needed our data to weave together a complete picture of the web.

And so you bought Urchin, and we all signed up and gave you our data, confident that it would help you make the Internet a better place for all of us. Now I’m not sure it was such a great idea.

Google Analytics Data Sharing Settings

It feels like you got what you needed from us and now you’re going to make the collective “us” pay to continue enjoying the benefits of what we thought was a mutually beneficial relationship. Some may say that’s what we get for using a free product, but I guess I expected more from you, Google.

I want my data back. I want parity with PPC. And, I would kindly like the “&limit=N” feature back too. I miss the old Google that believed in democracy of information and in doing the right thing. Please remember all the good times we’ve had together, and reconsider some of your recent neglect of inbound marketers. Thanks for listening.

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West Wing Week: "Bo Meets Bo"

Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, Dec. 2, 2011

West Wing Week: "Bo Meets Bo"

This week, as the President urged Republicans to join a Democratic effort to prevent a thousand dollar tax increase on the typical American family, the White House got spruced up for the holidays. The President also hosted the EU Summit, the Dutch Prime Minister, and announced a new commitment to fighting AIDS in America and around the world.

Watch the video.

SEOptimise

How to Create a Friendlier Forum

Posted: 01 Dec 2011 05:47 AM PST

Has your brand ever considered setting up a forum on its website for visitors?

The benefits to a brand of a successful online community can be considerable. It builds visitor loyalty, helps generate inbound links and can let you rank for really niche and long-tail keywords and phrases. If it's successful, a forum can work wonders for a website – but this success depends on it becoming a sociable and useful space. And, among other things, that means no trolls!

So how does one achieve that? Building a successful forum is far from easy. It takes time, investment and enthusiasm. If you're considering creating one for your visitors, there are things you can do to make it a pleasant online environment – it won't become a success if it's antisocial or slanderous.

Here are my golden rules for helping your brand's forum become a genuinely sociable place.

Set out a specific moderation policy
Although there are many benefits to a forum, there are also real dangers. The main one is that the content is beyond your control, putting you at risk of hosting slander or even negative comments about your brand.

On the other hand, you risk alienating visitors by excessively heavy-handed, biased or inconsistent moderation.

That is why it is so essential to establish a policy on moderating your forum and to stick to it. If you crack down hard on someone insulting your brand but ignore personal attacks on someone else, visitors will question your integrity.

Remember, the way a forum is moderated will set the tone. Make sure you only impose rules that you'd be happy following if the forum was on someone else's website.

Ensure everyone's read the rules
Invite everyone to read the moderation rules you'll be using and post regular reminders. There are plenty of examples available on existing forums, so don't worry about taking some inspiration from those.

Some of these rules will be obvious – no personal attacks, no spam, no commercial links, for example. However, it's also worth getting your brand's legal adviser to take a look at your first draft. These rules are to protect you from legal threats as well as to make your forum a more pleasant place to post.

Ensure that everyone who posts on your forum has been invited to read the rules as part of their sign-up process and then make sure you enforce them consistently.

Reward positive behaviour
You want members to stick around and help one another, even after they have got whatever it is they originally wanted from the forum.

A successful forum is usually based around a core few individuals who support other visitors and provide help, advice or conversation to new members. You need to encourage that kind of core in order to give your online community a backbone.

One way to do that is to reward positive behaviour, for example, people who respond to questions. One way to do that is to give people points for useful replies – inviting other community members to score posts and award points.

By earning points, members could earn additional privileges, such as a greater selection of avatars or more freedom than other members, perhaps to post links or create polls. You should show you value members who are trustworthy and who enhance the community.

Enlist the community
While it's a good idea for any brand-affiliated forum to moderate the comments being made on its pages, it increases the forum's integrity if the users themselves are involved in policing it.

This can be done in a number of ways. For example, you can give members the power to flag up posts for moderation – perhaps with a clause that enough votes automatically remove the post. You could also give trustworthy members the power to moderate other visitors. A self-policed community is less likely to be accused of having a corporate bias.

This can also free up some of your time, as moderating a forum can be an endless task. But it's a good idea to retain top level control. For example, perhaps don't allow your community moderators to ban other members without your approval.

Don't allow anonymous posts
Some people may disagree, but I think that the most successful and friendly forums are the ones that require you to register with a valid email address.

Anonymous comments invite trouble, as individuals can respond and comment without any real thought. Yes, requiring visitors to register can take some time and yes, that will put some people off.

However, by demanding visitors invest a few moments supplying an email address before they can participate, you deter them from making snide or flippant comments off the cuff.

This reduces the risk of the forum becoming a hotbed of spam and slander. It also gives you an opportunity to invite them to sign up their email address to a newsletter or marketing email. Don't automatically enrol them, though, as this could affect their loyalty. As Rand Fishkin advised at SearchLove 2011, keep the self-serving stuff to an absolute minimum and ensure your online community meets the needs of your target audience first and foremost – the rest will take care of itself.

*Image credit: Kicki on Flickr.